The present invention relates to mechanical equipment for sorting food items. It further relates to systems and equipment for handling and processing pickle chips and the like.
Pickles are typically made from cucumbers which are soaked in either a brine, vinegar or spicy solution. They can be made into chips by cutting the cucumber perpendicular to the longitudinal axis. All cut pickle chips are not perfect though, as some have holes or open centers, that is, they consist essentially only of their rinds. People usually find these chips to be unacceptable for use in their hamburger or other sandwiches. Therefore, it is preferable to separate out the "defective" pickle chips from the good chips before packing them. The defective pickle chips can then be processed into pickle relish, if desired.
In the past, the defective pickle chips were separated out by hand, after having been cut into chips and prior to packing. This was a labor-intensive and thus costly process requiring workers to stand by conveyors and to sort the chips manually to pick out the defective chips. Often, these inspectors had to insert their hands into a layer of chips several inches deep as it moved by on an inspection belt, after discharge from a shaker bed. Thus, due to the number of chips that had to be sorted manually there was always the possibility for human error.